Updated 3:55 am, Friday, April 21, 2017

The Milton Town Board ignores the town's ethics code on political conflicts.

THE STAKES:

How much more tone deaf can a group of politicians be?

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Say this much for the Milton Town Board: They're transparent. When they violate ethics rules, they don't even try to cover it up.

Far from it; the board voted 4-1 in an open meeting to brazenly violate the town's own standards of good government, and then sought to defend this indefensible move.

The town's ethics law clearly states, "No town officer or town employees shall serve as a committeeperson of any political party or political organization." Yet when the all-Republican town board wanted to appoint Milton GOP committee member Megan Soden to the Zoning Board of Appeals, it simply ignored the rule and voted her in.

Supervisor Dan Lewza justifies it like this: "I believe the law is unconstitutional."

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The state's top court disagrees. It considered in 1978 the very question of whether such a prohibition on political committee activity by a public employee or elected official is constitutional, and ruled unanimously that it is.

This is not a discussion about whether the ethics law is overly constricting — though it's hard to believe the town board can't find a qualified person to sit on the zoning board who doesn't have a conflict. Nor is it about whether Ms. Soden is qualified to serve on the ZBA.

The issue here is the board's decision to ignore the law and make the appointment anyway. It's an outrageous abuse of authority.

Ms. Soden could herself remedy the situation by resigning her political committee seat, but she says she doesn't want to. She could also decline the appointment. Instead she vows to recuse herself on votes that may present a conflict of interest.

That's not what the town's very reasonable ethics code calls for. In a town where all the elected officials belong to a single political party, the no-political-positions rule is a modest attempt at a check on partisan influence.

The town board could have remedied the situation, too, by amending the ethics code before it voted on Ms. Soden's appointment. After all, she evidently had the votes.

That's not, however, what a majority of the board chose to do. It's only now, after they've drawn some criticism, that they're looking at voting after the fact to make this unethical act lawful, by amending the ethics rules.

Maybe the town board will at least take the advice of Barbara Kerr, the one board member who didn't vote for Ms. Soden. Ms. Kerr suggests a non-partisan panel look into the issue of whether the ethics code needs changing, and that the issue get a public review. She favors keeping the rule except perhaps for panels that don't set policy or make final decisions.

In the meantime, Supervisor Lewza, at least, has decided not to run for re-election, saving residents the trouble of telling him what they think of this behavior in November. It's shenanigans like this that demonstrate exactly why these sorts of ethics rules are needed, and why one-party rule is usually a bad idea.